Capgras Delusion
by Hillside Dancing On
Summary: Sync knows exactly where Arietta's heart lies, and just how to break it. SyncArietta, Original!IonArietta.


**Pairing**: Sync x Arietta.

**Spoilers:** Lots.

**Warnings:** Abuse, mostly mental, but talk of physical. Sync being an angry boy.

**Disclaimer: **Tales of Abyss is not mine and I make no profit from its existence.

**A/N: **It was just recently that I developed a deep love for this ship. I really don't know how it manifested itself into this.

* * *

She's gone too far.

The mask is thrown aside, and her soft little hands are gliding, patting, _worshiping _over every arch and plane and stolen angle of his face; caressing his brow, cheekbones, the miniscule spaces at the corners of his eyes. She's kissing him so tenderly, too tenderly, as though he were a lover who'd been and gone and finally returned to her, years later, with wide open arms meant for her alone.

_Damn it_, why does she need to ruin this by going too far?

He grabs her by the wrists and shoves her away, savagely, and she blinks up at him with such confused, injured eyes that he knows for certain who she's been thinking of. The only Arietta he would even consider doing this with would never have been so stupid as to underestimate him, to assume that the Sync who flicked her forehead, tolerated her noisy play with the ligers, the Sync who let her cry into his lap when she remembered that Mommy had died alone, was nonetheless incapable of hurting her.

"Stop looking at me like that!" he roars, hands balling up hard enough to dent the palms through his gloves. She cringes away, gropes around like she's looking for her doll, which just happens to be lying across the room. "Don't you dare try and pretend I'm him!"

"I wasn't! I would never!" But she was and she knows it, he knows she does. For a moment, he's capable of lashing out at her, drawing blood, punishment for their mutual ignorance of thinking this could end in any other way...but no, he is not animalistic enough, not yet, that he would stoop to something so base when there are other, more creative ways to hurt someone.

And there are so many ways to hurt someone.

So he relaxes, breathes deep and allows all the places where rage has lined his face to smooth out peacefully as he smiles. If she wants Ion, he'll give her Ion.

"I know you weren't," he assures her in the high, gentle, lilting tone of a boy long dead. "It's alright, Arietta."

The effect is instantaneous, a shot of something noxious directly between the ribs. Whimpering, cringing, she closes her eyes and tries not to see, as if that could possibly prevent her from hearing. "S-stop...you aren't..."

But he continues to speak in the voice of a ghost. "I don't know why I should forgive you, though. You couldn't even protect me, Arietta. You couldn't repay me for all I did to help you. That's why I had to send you away."

"Stop!"

"You understand, don't you?"

"STOP IT!"

Still smiling, always smiling, he leans forward and twists the knife. "I'm sorry, Arietta. I loved you, but there is another now."

With the shrill, dying voice of a wild creature, she screams.

He smirks. She had it coming, after all.

The girl has curled in on herself, wracked with violent sobs of grief, a wretched fetal ball covered in black silk and lace. The choking cries are mingled intermittently with bouts of wailing so loud and so raw, it's a wonder the inner workings of her throat don't tear. She doesn't shift when he walks past – passing close enough to her face that he might have kicked her, had he thought she would even care – and she doesn't even look up.

But just as he is about to step out the door, her voice reaches the Tempest and turns his head, and he sees it then – amidst her child's face, running with tears and mucus and flushed from crying – pearl eyes blazing with a hatred so viperous, it seems poised to run him through. "You were never Ion! You're barely even Sync! You keep saying that you're just trash, but even trash has a reason why it exists. You're nothing, _nothing, _to anyone!"

She tears past, doll in hand, slamming blindly into him before disappearing out of sight...and for once, Sync has no desire to pursue her.

There are many ways to hurt someone.

Arietta knows it, too.

_-END-_


End file.
